The next day, sometime before the start of the Arena's third round, Rakna quietly listened to what the bugs he had sneaked into the spectating room were perceiving.
[| Where is Zasha? |] Bora's voice asked.
[| I don't know, sir. He hasn't contacted me about anything. |]
[|Tch, what's that bastard doing now… |]
'Zasha, huh? Is that the guy I couldn't find yesterday?' Rakna thought.
[| What about that Rita girl's brother? Have you properly contacted the seller? |]
The therian froze at the sudden mention.
"{Uh oh…}" Fray couldn't help but utter.
[| It was done. They received the order not to sell him at any cost. It took some convincing since the boy was a valuable subject with a Nirvana Skill. I had to compensate them adequately. |]
[| Good enough. I don't know why that other woman decided to give her credits, but it will for sure be hilarious once I tell her how useless her help was, hahaha! Bring her to me when she tries to get her brother back. Drag her to me if it's needed. |]
[| …understood. |]
'Fray, I think I will enjoy getting rid of this one,' Rakna stated indifferently and the author chuckled wryly in response.
"{Well, I will certainly not stop you. So? They bit the 'bait'. How will you take advantage of it?}"
'I have an idea. But for now,' he trailed and his eyes' lenses slid open. 'Search for Rita's brother and every other slave market in Zero. Hack them, identify them, and compile it,' he ordered and let Eye of Symphony run the program in the background as he was called up by the announcer.
The third round was nothing more than a series of duels. Honestly, he was quite curious about what the other four rounds would be, but he had no reason to stretch his stay for that long. He was already in a state of uncertainty, after all. Waiting was a bad idea.
When Rakna landed on the platform, which was essentially the same as the one on the first day, except for its larger size, his opponent followed suit.
"Ah, what a coincidence," he commented with a small sarcastic undertone as the shark-man from the first day faced him stoically. "Cura, was it? How much was it?"
"…half a million," the shark answered casually as he reached for the strange greatsword strapped to his back. "To break your mask."
Rakna smiled internally. "How quaint. I guess some pig expects me to come begging to him on my knees," he spoke with a short-lived chuckle that his opponent almost mirrored. "Well then, Cura, how about this? If you unmask me, I will surrender. Since we don't need to kill each other for this round… you might get lucky."
Cura tightened his grip on his weapon and narrowed his eyes. "Is that so…?" He voiced slowly and let out a small grin afterward. "Fine by me. I'm rather curious myself of what you look like."
"Well then, you'll have to work for it, won't you?" Rakna quipped and drew Sonata with the whistle of metal accompanying it.
"| Cura Arlan Vs Ranka Valcroft. Ready? 3, 2, 1… |"
Rakna's foot dug into the ground right before the end of the countdown and his opponent did the same as he held his weapon with both hands.
"| Fight! |"
Both combatants cracked the ground they stood on and disappeared only to fade back into view in the middle of the arena where their weapons clashed. Then, from each of their hilts, a shapeless power erupted and fought for domination.
The surge of Spiritual Intent produced a powerful shockwave that forced a dozen or so spectating participants to take off into the air. The audience too wasn't spared, but the distance had turned the shockwave into no more than a strong gust of wind.
Rakna winced as he felt the force of the blow shake his entire arm. He deflected the bladed mass of steel Cura used as a greatsword and squinted his eyes when he saw that a full-power oscillation of Sonata had barely made a scratch on the weapon.
He had already activated Lifeblood Rage and boosted his statistics to the maximum, but it wasn't enough to match his opponent's physical prowess.
'Looks like using mana for this fight is inevitable,' Rakna thought and promptly reinforced his body as well as poured mana into his blade, activating the Mana Oscillation. He then exchanged a couple of blows against Cura and created the same number of trenches in the arena's ground.
The shark man frowned as he sensed the mana flowing out, as well as the chip in his weapon. In a heartbeat, he didn't hesitate to emulate the masked woman's actions. In less than a second, their movements had become at least two times faster and more powerful.
Rakna deviated the strange sword for what felt like the hundredth time and scowled as he felt Sonata's spark of ego somehow complain to him about it. At the same time, he jumped back right before Cura slammed a fist where he stood and shook the whole hanging platform.
'There's no way it's going to last,' Rakna thought as he looked up to see the metal cords linking the platform to the ceiling. 'I wonder if it's like a small event to see this thing collapse...'
'Well, that aside,' he focused on Sonata as it rattled in his grip. 'Every time we clash weapons, it's as if that greatsword eats my Intent and mana… even the Eion and Blood Units,' he narrowed his eyes and used Crystal Sight on that weapon.
'King Gulon? A creature born to eat… that thing's alive,' he extracted the information he needed and then caught a glimpse of one more thing right when Cura lifted his weapon from a distance.
"[Devour, Gulon,]" he intoned and the blades of the greatsword turned into tentacles, their color fading into pristine white. Sharp scales grew everywhere and a mouth opened at the tip. A large black tongue stuck out and licked its lips before starting to inhale strongly.
Rakna widened his eyes as he was forced to plunge Sonata into the ground to resist the attraction coming from the living weapon. 'That thing… it's eating air and literal space,' he thought in shock as he saw the surroundings around Cura bend as if the world was being stretched.
"{A Gulon is a Legendary-Class Creature… an extinct one, as far as I knew. This 'King' probably is the last surviving member of its species,}" Fray said in awe. "{I never expected to see one here.}"
After a moment, the Gulon closed its mouth and seemed to be chewing. "[Swallow,]" Cura uttered and an audible gulp echoed. Then, energy erupted around him, pouring from his weapon's handle to his other hand, which he pointed at Rakna. "[Release,]" he said, and with a booming sound, a spiraling sphere composed of several different kinds of energy formed and shot out as a beam.
'Blood Energy, Mana, Ki, Spatial Energy, Eion, Wind, Intent, Metal, Spirit,' Rakna listed the energies he could recognize from the attack in a split second. 'This feels like an incomplete form of Flavia's Chaos Magic,' he thought. He was impressed but he was certainly not going to let it hit him. It was too fast and space-bending to be dodged with any fast-movement skill, so he only had one choice.
"[Rift Shuttle,]" he hurriedly coated himself in Dimensional Force and focused it all on Sonata. He then concentrated Crystal Sight on the incoming threat and thrust his sword. But the target of his attack was not the wave of energy itself.
The sound of glass breaking echoed, drowned by the Gulon's attack, and Sonata's blade sunk into a fissure in dimensions. Visible cracks in the fabric of space spread rapidly as Rakna poured more and more Dimensional Energy into it.
Then, the wave of chaotic energy struck against the veil of cracks. Some of it infiltrated the cracks and widened them, while the rest split into several stray rays of energy. It struck the ceiling, the ground, the walls, and the grid in front of the spectators who scrambled away screaming.
The hanging platform started swinging and one of the cords on Rakna's side snapped, followed by the second one. But, before the arena could tilt in his direction, the others broke simultaneously.
In the span of barely a few seconds, numerous explosions had damaged Arena Zero and injured a least a dozen people in its wake, and the entire fighting platform collapsed in a deluge of stone and steel. A surge of dust swallowed the area for a short moment and when it was cleared, both Rakna and Cura stood straight on top of the debris, nothing more than a bit dirtied by everything.
The Gulon stuck out its tongue and licked some of the overheated rocks nearby and the remnants of dimensional energy.
"This is the first time I see someone counter Gulon like that," the shark man admitted as he shouldered the voracious creature. "Shattering the bonds between dimensions to create a buffer… incredible display. However, that will not work anymore," he said as his weapon made something akin to a grin and produced glass-shattering sounds.
Rakna remained silent; it was unsure if he even acknowledged the words of his opponent. Without a sound, he simply lowered his posture and gripped Sonata with a different stance. Using both his hands and angling the edge toward the path of an upward swing.
Cura tightened his expression and sharpened his senses for what was to come. Then, everything happened too fast for him to follow. In one instant, the masked woman opposite of him made no obvious movements, but then, her legs blurred like a thousand overlapped illusions, and finally, she whispered something and vanished in the blink of an eye.
If it wasn't for his acute sense of danger and Gulon's suddenly trying to pull him away, he would have been beheaded by the strident oscillating blade that scraped his neck. Acting on pure reflex, he urgently stepped back and swung his weapon with all his might at his aggressor.
But to his shock, all it took to stop Gulon was a blurry palm strike. He felt a rippling force spread through the legendary creature's body and then shake his hand. One thing was sure; he was vastly outmatched in martial prowess.
Rakna followed up with one thrust toward his chest and he reacted by coating his free hand with mana and Intent and punching the sword's tip.
One more indiscriminate shockwave cleared out the ground and Cura grimaced as he felt the blade dig into his knuckle. He gritted his teeth and invoked a fake aura; overcharging himself with mana and discharging it outward.
With a scowl, Rakna rode the wave and opened his eyes wide when he saw Cura heft King Gulon and feed it copious amounts of Intent and mana. 'Sonata!' He shouted in his mind and the sword began to glow azure.
On command, three different types of energies erupted from the Soul Weapon's handle to shroud the blade. Sonata overpowered the lack of World and forcefully manifested them. Holy, Demonic, and Star Energy coalesced from within Rakna's soul and formed a tri-colored star, of black, white, and blue.
"[All-Devouring Pharos,]" Cura uttered and swung Gulon; a spiral of countless energies encased in a slash of mana and Sword Intent shot out.
"[Crescent…]" Rakna whispered and the light of Sonata shone stronger. "[Of A Falling Star,]" he intoned and launched his own attack. It first started as a small four-pointed multi-colored light before it expanded into a massive helix in the blink of an eye.
The two attacks clashed and a noise akin to thunder roared, followed by the literal deprivation of air in the atmosphere, and ultimately ended in a pillar of unbending energy that shook the entire Arena.